WPA help please :)
 

I am having trouble connecting when I encrypt my router with wpa-psk

First of all I am able to connect wireless when I unencrypted my router. So I know that works.

My info
Dell 5150
PCMCIA Netgear WG511T V1 using AR5212 chipset
Madwifi Driver.

rc.inet1.conf
I took the WPA Pre-Shared Key and did as follows (not my real info):
wpa_passphrase myessid mypsk000000
Resulting as follows

wpa-supplicant.conf
I get the following error

Your wpa_supplicant configuration file needs to be cleaned up.

Original:

Try:
There is little point in keeping the psk="..." line since the only thing it does is expose your password.
Your pairwise and group parameters are not needed for most home networks (or is your network really different from the usual home network setup).

Going back to your post - the failure messages you're getting indicate that your config file is not being successfully parsed; this may be because you didn't format it correctly (for example, the two 'psk' entries on a single line).

Thanks a bunch!

That cleared up the parse error.

One thing to keep in mind, the second bracket } seems to need its own line.

However I still cannot connect.

Here is the output now for wpa_supplicant -dw -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dwext -iath0
I am not sure why my BSSID gets blacklisted as I had highlighted and underlined.

When I start ath0 I get timed out:

Well, the information I gave you was for a typical WPA-PSK connection. Your network seems to be using EAP.

If you use EAP-TLS then the setup is something like this:

ssid="blah"
key_mgmt=WPA-EAP (NOTE: NOT PSK)
proto=WPA2
pairwise=CCMP
group=CCMP
eap=TLS
ca_cert="/path/to/cert.pem"
private_key="/path/to/user/pkcs12.key"
private_key_passwd="password for user pkcs12 key"


If you use PEAP then it's something like this:
ssid="blah"
key_mgmt=IEEE8021x
eap=PEAP
phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
identity="user"
password="password"

Well, really you have to tell use how the network is set up to authenticate - there are so many different 'EAP' methods to use and some methods can be set up in a variety of ways. It may help if you can point out instructions to set up WinDuhs for the wireless net.

These are the instructions for my router:
WPA
If you wish to enable WPA encryption, select WPA in the Network Authentication list.
WPA is an upgrade to the WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) standard for securing your wireless network.
If you would like to secure your wireless network using WPA, you will need the following: WPA enabled on your Dell TrueMobile 2300 Wireless Broadband Router
WPA support for your wireless clients. If you are using a Dell TrueMobile wireless client, you can check for the availability of WPA enabled software update for your wireless client at http://support.dell.com.
Enter the fields with the required parameters.
WPA Pre-shared Key
WPA Pre-Shared Key (PSK) is a field where the password is entered. All wireless clients
must also use this password to gain access to the network. Note that the Key format must also match the setting for the wireless clients.
Key Format
Key Format is a box that lists 2 items: Hexadecimal Digits (numbers 0-9 and letters A-F only) and ASCII Characters (any letter, number, or symbol). Select the proper format for your key. If your wireless client(s) only support one of the two formats, be sure to specify the correct one.
WPA Group Rekey Interval
WPA Group Rekey Interval is used to specify the frequency of encryption key rotations. The lower the number, the faster your encryption key will rotate, however, setting this number too low may cause your wireless network to slow down.
WPA Encryption
WPA Encryption has 2 choices: TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) - it is the most commonly used encryption method and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) - it can be used if your wireless clients do not support TKIP.


I don't think I have the option of EAP
However wpa encription type is either tkip or aes. I chose tkip.

Does that make any difference?

Here is what dmesg says when I boot

I thought TKIP was supposed to be the default for WPA-PSK, but you can force fewer options with:

network={
proto=WPA
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
proto=WPA
pairwise=TKIP
group=TKIP
ssid="myessid"
psk=f3ff2f9f7dcc0c6c65f93362a7a5799297960dfdcd5c682fc5c15974803205bc
}

Are you sure you generated the correct PSK?
The ESSID and passphrase are both case-sensitive and you need to use quotation marks if there are spaces (or special characters) in the ESSID or passphrase. For example:

wpa_passphrase "my essID" "blah blah blah"

is not the same as

wpa-passphrase "my essid" "blah blah blah"

According to the dell true mobile router you can use any letter, character, or number for a ascii passphrase.
I created a passphrase using both letters numbers upper case, lower case, and symbols.

I a copied the pass phrase that I entered from the router and pasted it into

I posted that into wpa_supplicant.conf as
psk=my pass phrase in hex

But I still can't connect wireless.

With /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 ath0_start
Im now getting this error
Here is the edited copy of my wpa_supplicant.conf

Just to check a few things:
1. the madwifi tools are installed
2. the following modules are loaded (lsmod): ath_pci, ath_hal, ath_rate_sample, wlan, wlan_tkip

I suspect most of those modules are loaded, but you might be missing something like 'wlan_tkip' since you don't have to load those modules when using the wireless device (but you do need it to use TKIP on madwifi). There is also a 'wlan_xauth' module, but I don't know if you need that or if that's only for using your card as an Access Point.

Going back to one of your earlier posts:

I missed that bit about '-Dwext'; have you tried with '-Dmadwifi' ?

If the problem is due to missing modules when the wpa_supplicant is started, just make sure the modules are loaded before then.

Thhe "-Dmadwifi" parameter is no longer useful for making wpa_supplicant talk to madwifi. In fact, for modern versions of kernel and madwifi driver, the use of "-Dwext" is required because "-Dmadwifi" will just not work.

As for the problems of this thread: I have no idea what is causing them.

Eric

Well, in the original rc.inet1.conf posted:

WLAN_WPADRIVER[1]="madwifi"

So that should be changed to "wext" then.

DHCP_HOSTNAME[1]="netgear"

Why bother with a hostname?


There may be a problem with the essid and passphrase. Older (broken) wireless routers had numerous defects such as a requirements for the ESSID to be in CAPS only, or that there should not be a space in the ESSID. Some had a low limit on the length of the passphrase; maybe some don't make it clear what characters they accept (alpha and numeric only?). [OT: An interesting problem I ran into with WinDuhs XP once was that the router could take the long passphrase but XP couldn't - so only the Linux machines connected.]

It is also possible that the router just wasn't set up quite right - anyone care to check the manual and see if the instructions might be a bit confusing?

Correct!
Well, I have configured a dynamic DNS in my LAN (DHCP server and DNS server talk to eachother), and whatever name I enter as "DHCP_HOSTNAME" ends up as a dynamic hostname in my own DNS (for the duration of the uptime of my PC). This is a nicety but not a requirement of any sort. But there are ISP's who let the consumer setup the DSL connection usiong a required DHCP_HOSTNAME, so that is where this parameter comes in handy.

Eric

lsmod; I thought I would print the entire thing in case I missed something.
Though slightly edited for brevity, I had posted the help instructions for my router in post# 5. I think it is pretty clear.

I will make the change and let you know about the results.

Eric,
I followed your page in setting this up.
I did not quite understand about setting up wext.

In your wext example I changed ndiswrapper to madwifi.


Running what? Some of the debug commands? or starting ath0?

Thanks a bunch for the responses. :)

Edited my rc.inet1.conf

Trying to start ath0
Still not connecting :(

This looks OK.

When you see that DHCP timeout message, can you run and report what that tells you?If it shows that association is complete, then the problem is the DHCP client. You can try "dhclient ath0" and see if thatgets you an IP address.


I thought I had expressed it clearly...you need to just run wpa_supplicant (it is a command you know) and the command output is what you see in the wiki. Look at the part where it says "drivers".

Eric